Vampire RainReview

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Sucks a lot more than blood.

By David Craddock

The premise of Vampire Rain seemed promising enough--a dark, brooding city caught in a literal torrential downpour with blood-sucking undead roaming the streets; hungry, and eager to increase their ranks. The intro provided high hopes as well, featuring a pert blonde waitress on her way home late at night. Footsteps crunch atop broken glass and pavement behind her, causing our busy victim to duck into an alleyway and huddle in fear. Too late, she looks up to see an undead clinging to the wall of a nearby building. His fangs glisten, he strikes... and that's where the intro ends. That's also, unfortunately, the last time I remember enjoying the time I spent playing this horrible, horrible game.

Vampire Rain tells the story of Lloyd, the only member of a group of operatives that has been unfortunate enough to have a run-in with the Nightwalkers before. Lloyd was certainly in better hands than mine during this past experience, as surviving an encounter with Vampire Rain's brand of undead is a rare experience indeed--but I digress. The first thing players will doubtless notice about their in-game avatar is that his aesthetics are a hybrid born from video game legends Solid Snake and Sam Fisher. The body suit reminds me of Snake's first Metal Gear Solid adventure, while the goggles are reminiscent of Sam Fisher's headgear. The use of notable gaming icons might have convinced developer Artoon that they were creating a character destined to be known as renowned, but instead comes off as what it is--an uninspired rip-off.

Combined with "boring," "laughable," and "poorly acted," "uninspired" seems the perfect way to describe Vampire Rain's attempt at a storyline. The in-game cinematics are well rendered and gripping for the most part, but the dialogue and voice-acting completely shatter any attempt at suspension of disbelief. Too often, the dialogue attempts to overwhelm the player with hand-holding and useless information. Instead of slowly leading into what's happening with characters and the game universe itself, the player is treated with riveting conversations akin to:

ASSISTANT: Sir, is it true that if the outbreak isn't stopped, the world will be overrun with undead in 908 days? COMMANDER: [Pounds fist on desk] Where'd you hear that? ASSISTANT: One of the lab boys, sir. COMMANDER: You see? This is why you shouldn't allow pencil pushers to run a country! [Assumes grim, determined pose and facial countenance] ASSISTANT: I'm sorry about your family, sir. COMMANDER: So am I, son. So am I.

This sort of trite, worse-than-B-movie dialogue comprises most of Vampire Rain and makes the game painful to watch, let alone painful to actually play. "908 days"? That's rather specific, not to mention the generic tone of the dialogue is both boring and poorly voice-acted.

Somebody thought this would look cool.

Another example comes from a discussion held by Lloyd's strike team concerning his past. One team members asks, "Isn't it true that Lloyd was the only survivor of such-and-such an incident?" The reply is something along the lines of, "Yes, and he was horrifically traumatized after the event." That sort of conversation is completely unnecessary, as Lloyd's past should be and is, in fact, well known among all members of his strike team. Not only was it terribly acted, as is every other story segment, but it was a sloppy way to give the player a bit of background info, and could have been handled much more cleanly by way of some sort of in-game event.

But that's okay, right? A bad story in a videogame is forgivable if the gameplay is good. True, but unfortunately, Vampire Rain's gameplay is far worse than its story, a feat not easily achieved. Vampire Rain is, first and foremost, a stealth game. Players should expect to conduct quite a bit of sneaking around, taking time to learn patrol routes, watching and learning enemy patterns. In this, the stealth aspect of a stealth game, Vampire Rain fails horrifically. According to the game's pseudo-epic storyline, the constant rainstorm featured in Rain's environments dulls the senses of the undead, which should allow operatives to conduct their espionage without too much interference. In reality, the use of rain seems to be a cover-up for Rain's monumentally stupid artificial intelligence.

Firstly, before the player does any sort of sneaking and poking around, NPCs must be identified as either harmless or potential threats by way of Necrovision, one of the goggle types our poor man's Sam Fisher uses during his adventures. Undead will glow a murky red when examined through Necrovision, and will subsequently appear on the game's radar screen. Until identified as enemies, they will not appear on the game's radar, which means that the player has to constantly scan every NPC walking around the game world, since vampires are human-esque in appearance. This wouldn't be so bad, except that the goggles have a very low battery life that lasts for no longer than roughly ten seconds. Because of this annoying gameplay quirk, players will find themselves repeating an irritating pattern of moving forward, scanning, moving forward, scanning, moving forward... It's slow, cumbersome, and just plain unnecessary, as the enemies should just be viewable on the radar from the start.

Not that avoiding the enemies is that difficult. Their cone of vision, a common feature to many stealth games, is usually quite small, and even if the player is seen, enemies typically have to see the player within their cone for as long as 3 to 5 seconds before they decide to come over and attack. It boggles the mind to wonder why, as in other popular games in this genre, an enemy would at least attempt to investigate suspicious activity. Instead, Rain's undead simply stare hard in the player's direction, as if they know that something mischievous is under way--but they just don't care to look unless they can be absolutely sure.

Vampire Rain's biggest, most glaring flaw lies in the repercussions of actually being seen by a Nightwalker. The enemy rushes over to Lloyd's position, fangs and claws unsheathed, an aura radiating from their rotting bodies like a heat mirage in the desert. I remember clearly the first time I was accosted by a vampire. I whipped out my rapid-fire gun and took aim. The cursor turned red as I squeezed the trigger, pumping round after round of silver bullets--yes, I'm aware that those are used on werewolves, but silver bullets are used here nonetheless--into my oncoming foe. A few seconds later, my clip was empty, the Nightwalker had just over half of his life meter intact--and I was dead after two hits. Two.